This invention relates in general to wireless telecommunications and specifically to an improved method and system for processing prioritized wireless calls. While the invention is particularly directed to the art of wireless telecommunications, and will be thus described with specific reference thereto, it will be appreciated that the invention may have usefulness in other fields and applications.
By way of background, cellular telephones often provide the primary means of communication in emergency situations. Increased cellular phone usage by the general public, however, often results in network congestion, particularly during emergency situations. Such congestion could prevent key personnel from obtaining access to the network during an emergency, thereby delaying their responses to and resolution of the emergency.
One way to ensure access to wireless services during an emergency is to provide prioritized wireless services for key personnel. In prioritized wireless services, pre-identified users may be assigned a special priority level based on the importance of their role in resolving the emergency. Service requests from the users are queued and service is provided according to each user's priority.
An example of prioritized wireless services is the Wireless Priority Service (WPS) program developed by the Department of Homeland Security. The WPS is a White House-directed National Security/Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) National Communications System (NCS) program dedicated to providing prioritized cellular network access for key national security and emergency response personnel. The goal of WPS is to provide an end-to-end nationwide wireless priority communications capability to key NS/EP personnel, using public network and the personnel's personal communication (mobile) device(s), during natural or man-made disasters or emergencies that cause congestion or network outages in the telecommunications network, including the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
Essentially, WPS is an enhancement to basic cellular service that allows prioritized NS/EP calls to queue for the next available service channel. The U.S. government specification for the WPS final capability defines 5 levels of priorities (priority 1-5, with priority 1 the highest priority) based on the WPS user's importance to national security. For example, to request WPS services for some mobile originations, a special user (whom the government designates and for whom the government pays a monthly fee for this service) needs to dial *272 and then the destination number. The user's call is then sent to its nearby base station (BS) and mobile switching center (MSC) and is queued for an available radio channel according to the user's priority. There are other ways to dial a NS/EP call and this includes also mobile terminations. A complete description of WPS can be found in “Wireless Priority Service (WPS) Industry Requirements for the Full Operating Capability (FOC) for CDMA-based Systems,” Issue 1.0, Jun. 4, 2004.
The WPS Industry Requirements (IR) define only one queue per sector of a cell, as noted in the last two paragraphs on page 6-8 before R-85 and in R-85 itself. Such queue is created when a special priority (National Security/Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP)) originating or terminating call has to wait for cell resources. When such a queue exists, the Hard Public Use Reservation by Departure Allocation (H-PURDA) algorithm is applied to the call attempts that follow. If a new call could use a different bandclass (B) than the one (A) due to which the queue was created, the “H-PURDA” algorithm recommended by the IR blocks even such new calls that arrive on bandclass B, not just the calls that would arrive on the blocked (exhausted) A.
The present invention contemplates a new and improved way that resolves the above-referenced difficulties and others. For example, it would be helpful for all of the truly available radio traffic channels to be used by the mobiles that are so equipped, rather than having all the new calls blocked while waiting for the one scarce resource of a certain type. to free up. Specifically, there should be as many potential queues defined per sector as there are applicable resource types such as different CDMA bandclasses.